From the Organist & Choirmaster
For our observances of All Saints’ the parish choir will offer many incredible pieces of liturgical music. I’d like to highlight a few All Saints’ presents us with a beautiful liturgy that commemorates those who rest upon another shore, it contains some of my personal favorite hymns and anthems. For instance, For all the saints, who from their labors rest, is a magnificent feat of hymnody. The text of the hymn was written by William Walsham How who was the Bishop of Wakefield (East London) in the late 1800s. He wrote many hymns, around 36, with notable names texts such as, Jesus! name of wondrous love, Thou art the Christ, O Lord, and of course, For all the Saints. The playwright Bernard Pomerance even includes Bishop How in his 1979 Broadway play The Elephant Man!
Two of my favorite anthems the parish choir has been diligently working on for the past few weeks are Edgar Bainton’s And I saw a new heaven, a stunning setting of the first verses of Revelation 21, and Parry’s setting of a Henry Vaughan poem My soul, there is a Country. Bainton present us with the text from revelation in a great Victorian style of composition, painting the texts well to aid us in our perception of how God “wipe(s) away all tears from our eyes” and presents us with the heavenly banquet of eternal life. Henry Vaughan’s poem isn’t a biblical text but it cultivates the ideas of everlasting life God grants to God’s people into a personal poem of yearning for heaven. The text is listed below:
My soul, there is country far beyond the shore, where stands a winged sentry, all skillful in the wars. There, above noise and danger, Sweet Peace wits crowned with smiles. And one, born in a manger, Commands the beauteous files.
He is thy gracious friend, And, O my soul awake! Did in pure love descend, to die here, for thy sake.
If thou canst get but thither, There grows the flower of Peace, The rose that cannot wither, Thy Fortress and thy ease. Leave then thy foolish ranges, for none can thee secure. But one, who never changes, Thy God, Thy Life, Thy Cure!